The "scoop" on peer-reviewed journal status in ERIC

As many of you know from my teaching sessions in your classes, I have in the past advised caution when using this search limiter (peer reviewed) in ERIC because it was assigned primarily to more recent records. Here is a clear explanation of how they assign the "peer reviewed" designator and the efforts underway to apply this retrospectively to earlier records.
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"ERIC is in the process of adding the peer-review status to journal records indexed between 1966
and 2003 to enhance the collection for the research community. To date, more than 30,000 records have been updated with the peer-review status. Updates will continue to be processed throughout the year.

To meet the challenges associated with obtaining peer-review data, we are using a model for information gathering that incorporates current industry practices while increasing precision to the extent possible. During this process, on a title by title basis, the ERIC team:

• Reviews a title in Ulrich’s – if the title is identified as refereed, we accept the Ulrich’s designation; if the field is blank, we then
• Check The Serials Directory – if the title is identified as peer-reviewed, we accept the designation; if the field is blank, we then
• Check the publisher’s Web site – if we determine that the journal is  peer reviewed, not just reviewed by an editor, we accept the identification; we also note the start of the peer-review process for a journal, if available, and apply this information to the ERIC records.
• If we still cannot determine the peer-reviewed status, or if we determine that the journal is not peer reviewed, the field is left blank.
• If we find that the only review performed was by a journal editor, ERIC does not designate the title as peer reviewed.

ERIC does not include historical data about when a journal became peer reviewed in the ERIC record or in the journal list. It can be very difficult to determine the peer-review start date for journals. After
holding discussions with Ulrich’s, a cross section of publishers, and Library Committee advisors, we concluded that historical data is not consistently reliable or available.  However, if we are able to determine the date when peer review began, the ERIC team applies the status across the appropriate date range of records. If we are not able to determine the peer-review start date, we apply the status determined for the journal to all published records, a practice used by other information providers.

I hope this is helpful in explaining how ERIC handles the assignment of peer-review status to journal records. Please feel free to contact us if you have questions at ericfeedback@csc.com."

Great news about the ERIC database!

From the Communications team at ERIC...
"The ERIC team is pleased to announce that, in response to librarian requests, we are adding the peer-reviewed status to records indexed in ERIC from 1966-2003 to bring the backfile in line with currently indexed records. To determine whether a journal title is peer-reviewed, ERIC staff librarians are consulting three sources: Ulrichsweb, The Serials Directory, and publisher-provided information. The peer-review information gathered from these sources is being updated in the digital library on a journal by journal basis. Enhanced records have already begun to appear on the ERIC Web site at www.eric.ed.gov. Vendors will receive the changes on a monthly basis.
We expect that the updates to the ERIC backfile, consisting of more than
680,000 journal records, will be completed within this calendar year.
For more information, visit the ERIC Web site and see the new policy on the Peer-Reviewed Designation.  If you have comments or questions, please feel free to contact us at ericfeedback@csc.com."

ERIC database updates

While at the national library conference this summer, I attended a session on the ERIC database and thought I would share some bits of interesting data:

• There are over  1.4 million records including 892 thousand journal records, of which 336 thousand are full-text.
• They index 1063 journals comprehensively (i.e., cover to cover) and an additional 100+ titles are indexed selctively
• They are collaborating with ProQuest (vendor) to provide links to the full text of dissertations and they are adding ERIC indexing terms to the records. This is huge as dissertation indexing (and hence searching) has been very primitive in the past.
• They add 4 thousand new records to the database every month. 
• The updates appear daily in the government's web site (eric.ed.gov) and monthly in the other vendors' versions (e.g., Ebsco)

What does ERIC index??

In addition to indexing the articles in Education journals, ERIC database also indexes documents from various organizations. The list of these sources of "grey literature" are now available for review at the ERIC website.The announcement from the ERIC contractors about how to access this information is provided below:

"I am pleased to announce that ERIC has released a list of organizations that contribute grey literature, published reports and books to ERIC. This new source list coupled with the Journal List completes the documentation of ERIC’s coverage, and can be found in the “Our Collection” area of the Web site at www.eric.ed.gov/nonjournals. It includes links to the contributing organizations’ Web sites.

The list was created with the encouragement of the library community to highlight the depth and breadth of the ERIC Collection, particularly in the grey literature area. Among the hundreds of sources listed are professional associations, research foundations, federal and state agencies, policy organizations, university affiliates, and commercial publishers.

Jane Atwell
Sr. Communications Specialist
ERIC Project | www.eric.ed.gov"

Just a reminder: Using Peer-Reviewed limiter in ERIC database

This message below from Nancy Cawley is information I've posted before, but it bears repeating. Keep this in mind for your own searching or when helping your students use ERIC (paula):

"... Currently ERIC applies the peer-reviewed designator to journals indexed from 2005 forward; some of these titles may also include the peer-reviewed status for issues published during the period 2002-2004. This data is included in the feed provided to commercial ERIC vendors [e.g., our ERIC access is through Ebsco] As a result, while limiting a search to peer-reviewed articles is helpful for locating peer-reviewed current materials, to find older records you must NOT use the limiter since those records were produced during a time when peer review was not part of the ERIC record.

ERIC obtains information about the peer-reviewed status of a publication from the publisher. When the information is not available from the publisher we use Ulrich’s Periodicals Directory. If you identify an error in an ERIC record, please contact ericfeedback@csc.com. We would be happy to investigate the issue...

Nancy Cawley
Communications Lead, ERIC Project"